Maybe Eli Lake was right about this.

According to McClatchy, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has been up to some trifling stuff, saying in an interview in Washington that U.S. troops might be needed for another ten years, despite the Status of Forces Agreement’s provisions to end the occupation by Dec. 2011:

"We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years," he said.

The Iraqi political figures interviewed by McClatchy are incensed at Dabbagh’s statements. But they have a Plan B:

"We expected something odd," said Alaa Maki, a member of a Sunni Muslim political bloc that’s forced Maliki to put the security agreement before voters as a referendum next year. "That is the reason we pushed for the referendum."

That would be this referendum, the one that might kick the U.S. out by 2010 and about which Dabbagh wouldn’t say much when I asked him on Tuesday.